Sunday, April 6, 2008

Long over due post (Bruce Lee single-room beat-'em-up "homage" game-thing)

So, now it's come time to actually write this post, I've lost my train of thought from last week. My plan was to have a definitive character style sorted out, and maybe some basic animation. What I have is 4 possible ideas (out of about 7 others, 3 were really poor :P).

All of them need tweaks, but my favorite ones are the two center ones. The first one is good, but I think it may be a little too detailed for me to animate/flash to handle. The last one, on reflection, looks pretty crappy too. I should've used a bigger palette I think. I think I might try and combine the middle 2 somehow for the actual sprite. I really like he pixel one, in fact I have a gigantic soft spot in my heart for anything pixelly, but the only other game I've finished was pixelly so I want to try something different now.

So basically, I want to make a simple little beat 'em up. Influenced not so much by Bruce Lee (and his movie Game of Death), but the more the crappy Hong Kong knockoff copycat movies that got made to cash in on his success.

I'm still tackling the creative decisions of it all, but I'm thinking something dumb like "Bruce Lo and the Tower of Doom" or "Bryce Li and the Temple of Deadly Games of Death..." Basically, the plan is to have a one room battlefield. You have enemies in that room that you have to dispatch with kung fu awesomeness before you can climb up the stairs to the next floor, where you repeat the process, but a little harder this time. For me, it means I don't have to worry about annoying things like scrolling... and I can save on backgrounds!

I also hope to implement some basic physics to it, so you can throw enemies into other enemies, or furniture, and pull off crazy floating combos. I don't think it'll be hard to find inspiration for the moves, but I think its more important to make something that is easy to pick up and kick ass with rather than something more technical, a.l.a Street Fighter 2. I don't really plan for it to be competitive in anyway... just something you can pick up and play for a little while and be entertained. Maybe if it works tho, I could beef it up a little to allow for the combo freaks to show off... I think I want to try and sort out the graphics first tho, considering thats where I normally seem to stall.

Anyway, return next time for more internet frivolity... possibly even back in regular intervals!

About Big Stompy Robots

Big Stompy Robots makes kick ass video games (and other assorted things). So far they haven't officially released anything, but it'll happen soon. If you want to hear more about these things and how they're made, right here is the place to be. If not, chill out. Reading this stuff is entirely optional.